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But though not opposed, it is still different from Action and
cannot belong to the same genus as activity; though if they are
both Motion, it will so belong, on the principle that alteration
must be regarded as qualitative motion.
Does it follow that whenever alteration proceeds from Quality, it
will be activity and Action, the quale remaining impassive? It
may be that if the quale remains impassive, the alteration will
be in the category of Action; whereas if, while its energy is
directed outwards, it also suffers- as in beating- it will cease
to belong to that category: or perhaps there is nothing to
prevent its being in both categories at one and the same moment.
If then an alteration be conditioned by Passivity alone, as is
the case with rubbing, on what ground is it assigned to Action
rather than to Passivity? Perhaps the Passivity arises from the
fact that a counter-rubbing is involved. But are we, in view of
this counter-motion, to recognize the presence of two distinct
motions? No: one only.
How then can this one motion be both Action and Passion? We must
suppose it to be Action in proceeding from an object, and Passion
in being directly upon another- though it remains the same motion
throughout.
Suppose however Passion to be a different motion from Action: how
then does its modification of the patient object change that
patient's character without the agent being affected by the
patient? For obviously an agent cannot be passive to the
operation it performs upon another. Can it be that the fact of
motion existing elsewhere creates the Passion, which was not
Passion in the agent?
If the whiteness of the swan, produced by its Reason-Principle,
is given at its birth, are we to affirm Passion of the swan on
its passing into being? If, on the contrary, the swan grows white
after birth, and if there is a cause of that growth and the
corresponding result, are we to say that the growth is a Passion?
Or must we confine Passion to purely qualitative change?
One thing confers beauty and another takes it: is that which
takes beauty to be regarded as patient? If then the source of
beauty- tin, suppose- should deteriorate or actually disappear,
while the recipient- copper- improves, are we to think of the
copper as passive and the tin active?
Take the learner: how can he be regarded as passive, seeing that
the Act of the agent passes into him [and becomes his Act]? How
can the Act, necessarily a simple entity, be both Act and
Passion? No doubt the Act is not in itself a Passion;
nonetheless, the learner coming to possess it will be a patient
by the fact of his appropriation of an experience from outside:
he will not, of course, be a patient in the sense of having
himself performed no Act; learning- like seeing- is not analogous
to being struck, since it involves the acts of apprehension and
recognition.
21. How, then, are we to recognise Passivity, since clearly it is
not to be found in the Act from outside which the recipient in
turn makes his own? Surely we must look for it in cases where the
patient remains without Act, the passivity pure.
Imagine a case where an agent improves, though its Act tends
towards deterioration. Or, say, a a man's activity is guided by
evil and is allowed to dominate another's without restraint. In
these cases the Act is clearly wrong, the Passion blameless.
What then is the real distinction between Action and Passion? Is
it that Action starts from within and is directed upon an outside
object, while Passion is derived from without and fulfilled
within? What, then, are we to say of such cases as thought and
opinion which originate within but are not directed outwards?
Again, the Passion "being heated" rises within the self, when
that self is provoked by an opinion to reflection or to anger,
without the intervention of any external. Still it remains true
that Action, whether self-centred or with external tendency, is a
motion rising in the self.
How then do we explain desire and other forms of aspiration?
Aspiration must be a motion having its origin in the object
aspired to, though some might disallow "origin" and be content
with saying that the motion aroused is subsequent to the object;
in what respect, then, does aspiring differ from taking a blow or
being borne down by a thrust?
Perhaps, however, we should divide aspirations into two classes,
those which follow intellect being described as Actions, the
merely impulsive being Passions. Passivity now will not turn on
origin, without or within- within there can only be deficiency;
but whenever a thing, without itself assisting in the process,
undergoes an alteration not directed to the creation of Being but
changing the thing for the worse or not for the better, such an
alteration will be regarded as a Passion and as entailing
passivity.
If however "being heated" means "acquiring heat," and is
sometimes found to contribute to the production of Being and
sometimes not, passivity will be identical with impassivity:
besides, "being heated" must then have a double significance
[according as it does or does not contribute to Being].
The fact is, however, that "being heated," even when it
contributes to Being, involves the presence of a patient
[distinct from the being produced]. Take the case of the bronze
which has to be heated and so is a patient; the being is a
statue, which is not heated except accidentally [by the accident
of being contained in the bronze]. If then the bronze becomes
more beautiful as a result of being heated and in the same
proportion, it certainly becomes so by passivity; for passivity
must, clearly, take two forms: there is the passivity which tends
to alteration for better or for worse, and there is the passivity
which has neither tendency.
22. Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion
functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration.
Action too implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless
or whether it be driven by the impulse comported by the term
"Action" to find its goal in an external object. There is Motion
in both Action and Passion, but the differentia distinguishing
Action from Passion keeps Action impassive, while Passion is
recognised by the fact that a new state replaces the old, though
nothing is added to the essential character of the patient;
whenever Being [essential Being] is produced, the patient remains
distinct.
Thus, what is Action in one relation may be Passion in another.
One same motion will be Action from the point of view of A,
Passion from that of B; for the two are so disposed that they
might well be consigned to the category of Relation- at any rate
in the cases where the Action entails a corresponding Passion:
neither correlative is found in isolation; each involves both
Action and Passion, though A acts as mover and B is moved: each
then involves two categories.
Again, A gives motion to B, B receives it, so that we have a
giving and a receiving- in a word, a relation.
But a recipient must possess what it has received. A thing is
admitted to possess its natural colour: why not its motion also?
Besides, independent motions such as walking and thought do, in
fact, involve the possession of the powers respectively to walk
and to think.
We are reminded to enquire whether thought in the form of
providence constitutes Action; to be subject to providence is
apparently Passion, for such thought is directed to an external,
the object of the providential arrangement. But it may well be
that neither is the exercise of providence an action, even though
the thought is concerned with an external, nor subjection to it a
Passion. Thought itself need not be an action, for it does not go
outward towards its object but remains self-gathered. It is not
always an activity; all Acts need not be definable as activities,
for they need not produce an effect; activity belongs to Act only
accidentally.
Does it follow that if a man as he walks produces footprints, he
cannot be considered to have performed an action? Certainly as a
result of his existing something distinct from himself has come
into being. Yet perhaps we should regard both action and Act as
merely accidental, because he did not aim at this result: it
would be as we speak of Action even in things inanimate- "fire
heats," "the drug worked."
So much for Action and Passion.
23. As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why
are not all its modes to be brought under one category?
Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing
magnitude, the quale as possessing colour; it would include
fatherhood and the complementary relationships, since the father
possesses the son and the son possesses the father: in short, it
would include all belongings.
If, on the contrary, the category of Possession comprises only
the things of the body, such as weapons and shoes, we first ask
why this should be so, and why their possession produces a single
category, while burning, cutting, burying or casting them out do
not give another or others. If it is because these things are
carried on the person, then one's mantle lying on a couch will
come under a different category from that of the mantle covering
the person. If the ownership of possession suffices, then clearly
one must refer to the one category of Possession all objects
identified by being possessed, every case in which possession can
be established; the character of the possessed object will make
no difference.
If however Possession is not to be predicated of Quality because
Quality stands recognised as a category, nor of Quantity because
the category of Quantity has been received, nor of parts because
they have been assigned to the category of Substance, why should
we predicate Possession of weapons, when they too are comprised
in the accepted category of Substance? Shoes and weapons are
clearly substances.
How, further, is "He possesses weapons," signifying as it does
that the action of arming has been performed by a subject, to be
regarded as an entirely simple notion, assignable to a single
category?
Again, is Possession to be restricted to an animate possessor, or
does it hold good even of a statue as possessing the objects
above mentioned? The animate and inanimate seem to possess in
different ways, and the term is perhaps equivocal. Similarly,
"standing" has not the same connotation as applied to the animate
and the inanimate.
Besides, how can it be reasonable for what is found only in a
limited number of cases to form a distinct generic category?
24. There remains Situation, which like Possession is confined to
a few instances such as reclining and sitting.
Even so, the term is not used without qualification: we say "they
are placed in such and such a manner," "he is situated in such
and such a position." The position is added from outside the
genus.
In short, Situation signifies "being in a place"; there are two
things involved, the position and the place: why then must two
categories be combined into one?
Moreover, if sitting signifies an Act, it must be classed among
Acts; if a Passion, it goes under the category to which belong
Passions complete and incomplete.
Reclining is surely nothing but "lying up," and tallies with
"lying down" and "lying midway." But if the reclining belongs
thus to the category of Relation, why not the recliner also? For
as "on the right" belongs to the Relations, so does "the thing on
the right"; and similarly with "the thing on the left."
25. There are those who lay down four categories and make a
fourfold division into Substrates, Qualities, States, and
Relative States, and find in these a common Something, and so
include everything in one genus.
Against this theory there is much to be urged, but particularly
against this posing of a common Something and a single
all-embracing genus. This Something, it may be submitted, is
unintelligible to themselves, is indefinable, and does not
account either for bodies or for the bodiless. Moreover, no room
is left for a differentia by which this Something may be
distinguished. Besides, this common Something is either existent
or non-existent: if existent, it must be one or other of its
[four] species;- if non-existent, the existent is classed under
the non-existent. But the objections are countless; we must leave
them for the present and consider the several heads of the
division.
To the first genus are assigned Substrates, including Matter, to
which is given a priority over the others; so that what is ranked
as the first principle comes under the same head with things
which must be posterior to it since it is their principle.
First, then: the prior is made homogeneous with the subsequent.
Now this is impossible: in this relation the subsequent owes its
existence to the prior, whereas among things belonging to one
same genus each must have, essentially, the equality implied by
the genus; for the very meaning of genus is to be predicated of
the species in respect of their essential character. And that
Matter is the basic source of all the rest of things, this
school, we may suppose, would hardly deny.
Secondly: since they treat the Substrate as one thing, they do
not enumerate the Existents; they look instead for principles of
the Existents. There is however a difference between speaking of
the actual Existents and of their principles.
If Matter is taken to be the only Existent, and all other things
as modifications of Matter, it is not legitimate to set up a
single genus to embrace both the Existent and the other things;
consistency requires that Being [Substance] be distinguished from
its modifications and that these modifications be duly
classified.
Even the distinction which this theory makes between Substrates
and the rest of things is questionable. The Substrate is
[necessarily] one thing and admits of no differentia- except
perhaps in so far as it is split up like one mass into its
various parts; and yet not even so, since the notion of Being
implies continuity: it would be better, therefore, to speak of
the Substrate, in the singular.
26. But the error in this theory is fundamental. To set Matter
the potential above everything, instead of recognising the
primacy of actuality, is in the highest degree perverse. If the
potential holds the primacy among the Existents, its
actualization becomes impossible; it certainly cannot bring
itself into actuality: either the actual exists previously, and
so the potential is not the first-principle, or, if the two are
to be regarded as existing simultaneously, the first-principles
must be attributed to hazard. Besides, if they are simultaneous,
why is not actuality given the primacy? Why is the potential more
truly real than the actual?
Supposing however that the actual does come later than the
potential, how must the theory proceed? Obviously Matter does not
produce Form: the unqualified does not produce Quality, nor does
actuality take its origin in the potential; for that would mean
that the actual was inherent in the potential, which at once
becomes a dual thing.
Furthermore, God becomes a secondary to Matter, inasmuch as even
he is regarded as a body composed of Matter and Form- though how
he acquires the Form is not revealed. If however he be admitted
to exist apart from Matter in virtue of his character as a
principle and a rational law [logos], God will be bodiless, the
Creative Power bodiless. If we are told that he is without Matter
but is composite in essence by the fact of being a body, this
amounts to introducing another Matter, the Matter of God.
Again, how can Matter be a first-principle, seeing that it is
body? Body must necessarily be a plurality, since all bodies are
composite of Matter and Quality. If however body in this case is
to be understood in some different way, then Matter is identified
with body only by an equivocation.
If the possession of three dimensions is given as the
characteristic of body, then we are dealing simply with
mathematical body. If resistance is added, we are no longer
considering a unity: besides, resistance is a quality or at least
derived from Quality.
And whence is this resistance supposed to come? Whence the three
dimensions? What is the source of their existence? Matter is not
comprised in the concept of the three-dimensional, nor the
three-dimensional in the concept of Matter; if Matter partakes
thus of extension, it can no longer be a simplex.
Again, whence does Matter derive its unifying power? It is
assuredly not the Absolute Unity, but has only that of
participation in Unity.
We inevitably conclude that Mass or Extension cannot be ranked as
the first of things; Non-Extension and Unity must be prior. We
must begin with the One and conclude with the Many, proceed to
magnitude from that which is free from magnitude: a One is
necessary to the existence of a Many, Non-Magnitude to that of
Magnitude. Magnitude is a unity not by being Unity-Absolute, but
by participation and in an accidental mode: there must be a
primary and absolute preceding the accidental, or the accidental
relation is left unexplained.
The manner of this relation demands investigation. Had this been
undertaken, the thinkers of this school would probably have
lighted upon that Unity which is not accidental but essential and
underived.
27. On other grounds also, it is indefensible not to have
reserved the high place for the true first-principle of things
but to have set up in its stead the formless, passive and
lifeless, the irrational, dark and indeterminate, and to have
made this the source of Being. In this theory God is introduced
merely for the sake of appearance: deriving existence from Matter
he is a composite, a derivative, or, worse, a mere state of
Matter.
Another consideration is that, if Matter is a substrate, there
must be something outside it, which, acting on it and distinct
from it, makes it the substrate of what is poured into it. But if
God is lodged in Matter and by being involved in Matter is
himself no more than a substrate, he will no longer make Matter a
substrate nor be himself a substrate in conjunction with Matter.
For of what will they be substrates, when that which could make
them substrates is eliminated? This so-called substrate turns out
to have swallowed up all that is; but a substrate must be
relative, and relative not to its content but to something which
acts upon it as upon a datum.
Again, the substrate comports a relation to that which is not
substrate; hence, to something external to it: there must, then,
be something apart from the substrate. If nothing distinct and
external is considered necessary, but the substrate itself can
become everything and adopt every character, like the versatile
dancer in the pantomime, it ceases to be a substrate: it is,
essentially, everything. The mime is not a substrate of the
characters he puts on; these are in fact the realisation of his
own personality: similarly, if the Matter with which this theory
presents us comports in its own being all the realities, it is no
longer the substrate of all: on the contrary, the other things
can have no reality whatever, if they are no more than states of
Matter in the sense that the poses of the mime are states through
which he passes.
Then, those other things not existing, Matter will not be a
substrate, nor will it have a place among the Existents; it will
be Matter bare, and for that reason not even Matter, since Matter
is a relative. The relative is relative to something else: it
must, further, be homogeneous with that something else: double is
relative to half, but not Substance to double.
How then can an Existent be relative to a Non-existent, except
accidentally? But the True-Existent, or Matter, is related (to
what emerges from it) as Existent to Non-Existent. For if
potentiality is that which holds the promise of existence and
that promise does not constitute Reality, the potentiality cannot
be a Reality. In sum, these very teachers who deprecate the
production of Realities from Nonrealities, themselves produce
Non-reality from Reality; for to them the universe as such is not
a Reality.
But is it not a paradox that, while Matter, the Substrate, is to
them an existence, bodies should not have more claim to
existence, the universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded
on the reality of one of its parts?
It is no less paradoxical that the living form should owe
existence not to its soul but to its Matter only, the soul being
but an affection of Matter and posterior to it. From what source
then did Matter receive ensoulment? Whence, in short, is soul's
entity derived? How does it occur that Matter sometimes turns
into bodies, while another part of it turns into Soul? Even
supposing that Form might come to it from elsewhere, that
accession of Quality to Matter would account not for Soul, but
simply for organized body soulless. If, on the contrary, there is
something which both moulds Matter and produces Soul, then prior
to the produced there must be Soul the producer.
28. Many as are the objections to this theory, we pass on for
fear of the ridicule we might incur by arguing against a position
itself so manifestly ridiculous. We may be content with pointing
out that it assigns the primacy to the Non-existent and treats it
as the very summit of Existence: in short, it places the last
thing first. The reason for this procedure lies in the acceptance
of sense-perception as a trustworthy guide to first-principles
and to all other entities.
This philosophy began by identifying the Real with body; then,
viewing with apprehension the transmutations of bodies, decided
that Reality was that which is permanent beneath the superficial
changes- which is much as if one regarded space as having more
title to Reality than the bodies within it, on the principle that
space does not perish with them. They found a permanent in space,
but it was a fault to take mere permanence as in itself a
sufficient definition of the Real; the right method would have
been to consider what properties must characterize Reality, by
the presence of which properties it has also that of unfailing
permanence. Thus if a shadow had permanence, accompanying an
object through every change, that would not make it more real
than the object itself. The sensible universe, as including the
Substrate and a multitude of attributes, will thus have more
claim to be Reality entire than has any one of its component
entities (such as Matter): and if the sensible were in very truth
the whole of Reality, Matter, the mere base and not the total,
could not be that whole.
Most surprising of all is that, while they make sense-perception
their guarantee of everything, they hold that the Real cannot be
grasped by sensation;- for they have no right to assign to Matter
even so much as resistance, since resistance is a quality. If
however they profess to grasp Reality by Intellect, is it not a
strange Intellect which ranks Matter above itself, giving Reality
to Matter and not to itself? And as their "Intellect" has, thus,
no Real-Existence, how can it be trustworthy when it speaks of
things higher than itself, things to which it has no affinity
whatever?
But an adequate treatment of this entity [Matter] and of
substrates will be found elsewhere.
29. Qualities must be for this school distinct from Substrates.
This in fact they acknowledge by counting them as the second
category. If then they form a distinct category, they must be
simplex; that is to say they are not composite; that is to say
that as qualities, pure and simple, they are devoid of Matter:
hence they are bodiless and active, since Matter is their
substrate- a relation of passivity.
If however they hold Qualities to be composite, that is a strange
classification which first contrasts simple and composite
qualities, then proceeds to include them in one genus, and
finally includes one of the two species [simple] in the other
[composite]; it is like dividing knowledge into two species, the
first comprising grammatical knowledge, the second made up of
grammatical and other knowledge.
Again, if they identify Qualities with qualifications of Matter,
then in the first place even their Seminal Principles [Logoi]
will be material and will not have to reside in Matter to produce
a composite, but prior to the composite thus produced they will
themselves be composed of Matter and Form: in other words, they
will not be Forms or Principles. Further, if they maintain that
the Seminal Principles are nothing but Matter in a certain state,
they evidently identify Qualities with States, and should
accordingly classify them in their fourth genus. If this is a
state of some peculiar kind, what precisely is its differentia?
Clearly the state by its association with Matter receives an
accession of Reality: yet if that means that when divorced from
Matter it is not a Reality, how can State be treated as a single
genus or species? Certainly one genus cannot embrace the Existent
and the Non-existent.
And what is this state implanted in Matter? It is either real, or
unreal: if real, absolutely bodiless: if unreal, it is introduced
to no purpose; Matter is all there is; Quality therefore is
nothing. The same is true of State, for that is even more unreal;
the alleged Fourth Category more so.
Matter then is the sole Reality. But how do we come to know this?
Certainly not from Matter itself. How, then? From Intellect? But
Intellect is merely a state of Matter, and even the "state" is an
empty qualification. We are left after all with Matter alone
competent to make these assertions, to fathom these problems. And
if its assertions were intelligent, we must wonder how it thinks
and performs the functions of Soul without possessing either
Intellect or Soul. If, then, it were to make foolish assertions,
affirming itself to be what it is not and cannot be, to what
should we ascribe this folly? Doubtless to Matter, if it was in
truth Matter that spoke. But Matter does not speak; anyone who
says that it does proclaims the predominance of Matter in
himself; he may have a soul, but he is utterly devoid of
Intellect, and lives in ignorance of himself and of the faculty
alone capable of uttering the truth in these things.
30. With regard to States:
It may seem strange that States should be set up as a third
class- or whatever class it is- since all States are referable to
Matter. We shall be told that there is a difference among States,
and that a State as in Matter has definite characteristics
distinguishing it from all other States and further that, whereas
Qualities are States of Matter, States properly so-called belong
to Qualities. But if Qualities are nothing but States of Matter,
States [in the strict sense of the term] are ultimately reducible
to Matter, and under Matter they must be classed.
Further, how can States constitute a single genus, when there is
such manifold diversity among them? How can we group together
three yards long" and "white"- Quantity and Quality respectively?
Or again Time and Place? How can "yesterday," "last year," "in
the Lyceum," "in the Academy," be States at all? How can Time be
in any sense a State? Neither is Time a State nor the events in
Time, neither the objects in Space nor Space itself.
And how can Action be a State? One acting is not in a state of
being but in a state of Action, or rather in Action simply: no
state is involved. Similarly, what is predicated of the patient
is not a state of being but a state of Passion, or strictly,
Passion unqualified by state.
But it would seem that State was the right category at least for
cases of Situation and Possession: yet Possession does not imply
possession of some particular state, but is Possession absolute.
As for the Relative State, if the theory does not include it in
the same genus as the other States, another question arises: we
must enquire whether any actuality is attributed to this
particular type of relation, for to many types actuality is
denied.
It is, moreover, absurd that an entity which depends upon the
prior existence of other entities should be classed in the same
genus with those priors: one and two must, clearly, exist, before
half and double can.
The various speculations on the subject of the Existents and the
principles of the Existents, whether they have entailed an
infinite or a finite number, bodily or bodiless, or even supposed
the Composite to be the Authentic Existent, may well be
considered separately with the help of the criticisms made by the
ancients upon them.
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